From Kim Iskyan, Editor, True Wealth Asia:

I was 22, fresh out of university, when my father gave me US$5,000. It was left over from a college savings account, and the one condition of the gift was that I invest it.

Back then, newspapers (or, if you worked on a trading floor, a Quotron) were the way to check stock quotes. And to buy a stock through a “discount” broker (they weren’t cheap by today’s standards) you had to call in and place the order.

Armed with a liberal arts education that was heavy on writing, politics and history, and with a few months’ worth of scanning the Wall Street Journal under my belt, I figured I was ready to invest.

At the time, the shares of personal computer companies (which today are about as exciting as auto stocks) were the tech darlings of the market. With this money burning…